Queen Substance: Artificial Art, Smart Suitcases
Week of October 29, 2018
10.29.2018
“Whatever it is that you think you want to do, and whatever it is that you think stands between you and that, stop making excuses. You can do anything.”
- Katia Beauchamp, Co-Founder and CEO, Birchbox
A TALE OF TWO TECH TITANS
Behemoths of industry and founder personality, Tesla and Amazon, were two of the companies that reported earnings last week. Amazon beat the Street’s third quarter estimates, but its lackluster fourth quarter projections caused the stock to fall 7.8% (marking one of the stock’s biggest declines since 2014). Meanwhile in the world of Elon Musk, Tesla unexpectedly announced — profits. The electric car maker’s stock rose 27% on the news. The Silicon Valley carmaker has been under scrutiny for its manufacturing practices and long term profit viability.
Social media giants Twitter and Snap also reported. Twitter soared 13% on better than expected numbers while Snap hit an all time low. Expect another big week for tech stocks with planned earnings from Apple and Facebook.
⚡39% of Amazon’s workforce are women.
FUNDS RAISING FUNDS
-Top of the food chain. Tiger Global has raised $3.75B for it’s latest fund, amounting to the largest VC raise of the decade. The firm’s 11th fund, surpassed its initial $3 billion target. Private Investment Partners XI will focus investments on the U.S., China and India. Tiger’s portfolio is comprised of a who’s who of unicorns including Spotify, Juul and Allbirds. Fun fact: Tiger just led a $50 million round, alongside Snoop Dogg’s fund, in Merc, a company that supplies software to the cannabis industry.
-Bessemer’s newest fund, is now its biggest. The $1.85 billion BVP X fund will focus on seed, Series A and Series B companies. Bessemer’s greatest hits include Box, Linkedin and Shopify.
- #Thriving. Thrive Global has raised $1 billion across two funds. Like the aforementioned raises, it is the New York- based VCs biggest to date (see a trend here people?). Run by Joshua Kushner (brother to Jared and husband to supermodel/entrepreneur Karlie Kloss), it has seen big exits from companies like Instagram and Github.
⚡7% of funding partners at the top 100 firms are women.
THE IRONY OF THE FEMALE FUNDING GAP
We all know the stats, women make 80.5 cents for every dollar a man earns. But a new study shows, that women also get shafted when it comes to paying themselves. SF-based Consulting Firm J Thelander found that the average female entrepreneur pays herself a salary of $179,444 while the average male founder pays himself $232,659. Why would women do this? Look to the distribution of venture capital funds. Women only receive around 2% of all VC money which means they have less capital to spend. As a result, many take a lower salary or forgo one all together. The study which analyzed data of 160 companies, also found that female founders took a smaller paycheck to show investors they “are budget-conscious and not spending capital extravagantly.”
⚡In the United States, Latin women have raised 0.4% of the $400 billion VCs invested in startups since 2009.
OLD GUARD. NEW HAT.
$34 Billion is the size of the GDP of Latvia and Paraguay. It also happens to be the amount IBM just ponied up for software maker Red Hat. The transaction, is IBM’s largest deal and the third biggest for the U.S. technology industry. The tech giant’s shares have lost nearly a third of their value in the last five years, while Red Hat’s are up 170% over the same period. The acquisition, will help Big Blue compete with the likes of Amazon in the all-important cloud-based arena.
⚡IBM CEO, Ginny Rometty, started at IBM in 1981 as a systems engineer.
A.I. IS COMING FOR YOUR ART
The great masters of the art world include Picasso, van Gogh, Pollack, Dali and now Obvious? The latter, is a trio of 25-year-old French artists whose paintbrush is artificial intelligence. Last week, their work, a “Portrait of Edmond Belamy,” sold at Christie’s for $432,500. The print, an image created through a machine learning algorithm that scans historical artwork, was expected to fetch between $7,000 — $10,000. Whether you consider this to be art or not, one thing it has in common with the greats is controversy. There are claims — as well as a partial admission — that Obvious ‘borrowed’ a significant amount of the code behind “Belamy,” from another AI artist.
⚡Of the top 100 works sold in auction in 2017, 13 were made by female artists.
Let’s be real here. You are 25-years-old and are still carrying around the tattered suitcase, complete with broken zippers and misaligned wheels that you used whilst studying abroad in Barcelona. It’s getting #awkward to schlep it with you on work trips with your boss, but you also do not want to spend $750 for a new one. Enter Away. A company, that built a range of suitcases, priced between $225- $595, to solve this dilemma. Jen Rubio, who at the time was in her 20s, came up with the idea after her suitcase imploded on a trip to Zurich. The goal of her and co-founder Steph Korey was to create affordable, functional and stylish luggage. Did we mention its smart? As in you can charge your cell phone in it instead of looking for an outlet at the airport. Since its formation in 2016, Away has raised $81 Million and sold over 500,000 suitcases.
Take. Us. Back. Ended the week with a quick werk jaunt to San Diego.
